Interactive Seven 2009 Supplement - Marketing Week

MWIB_260209_p041 19/2/09 17:48 Page 41
INTERACTIVE USER-CENTRED DESIGN
Style over substance? The Dior
Homme website is popular,
despite usability issues, because
it demonstrates the brand’s
products in an attractive way
“Keep it simple.
Get to know your
consumer well...
Provide them with
content, tools and
types of
engagement that
meet their needs
and allow them to
start a dialogue
with you”
Mo Rogers, AKQA
tor of strategic services at AKQA. She says that ensuring greater usability
means constantly thinking about the needs of end users and applying
design techniques with that in mind. But it is easy to over-complicate
the process. “Keep it simple. Get to know your consumer really well,
understand what they are thinking and feeling about your brand. Provide
them with content, tools and types of engagement that meet their
needs and allow them to start a dialogue with you,” she says.
She rates Apple and BBC for having clear, user-centred websites,
which build on the brands’ strong design heritage: “The end result is
well-structured, intuitive and highly usable.”
However, others fail to achieve these high standards. “Fashion labels
regularly commit every usability crime in the book: opening multiple
browser windows; pure Flashbased,
labyrinthine navigation;
ultra high-resolution images which
take forever to load; and no clear
purpose to the experience, but just
a set of images and MPEGs,”
Rogers says. “Many packaged
goods brands are also poor, particularly
when the site ends up showing
the most recent TV ad, perhaps
just supported by a small game that
serves little purpose except to tick
the box of ‘interactivity’”.
However, the Dior and Ralph
Lauren sites do have their fans, as
they offer a clear demonstration of
the brands’ products. According to
a survey by usability agency Webcredible,
the best high street e-commerce
sites are improving their
ease of use every year. This year,
the top 20 sites boosted their average usability score as measured by the
agency to 67.8 from 57 last year. This highlights the retailers’ recognition
of the importance of usability in winning sales in an increasingly
competitive environment.
The usability league of high street ecommerce sites is topped in the
survey by WH Smith, rising from 17th place last year. Early Learning
Centre’s site jumped to second place from eighth last year and Hamleys
leapt up the league to share joint third with John Lewis and last year’s
number one HMV.
Use them or lose them
Webcredible director Trenton Moss says the sites have addressed the
basic barriers to usability. They have eliminated hidden delivery costs,
ditched confusing check-out procedures and weeded out repeated error
pages. He points to some of the usability problems that websites can face.
For example, Norwich Union’s site commits a cardinal error. When users
apply for car insurance, an error message appears if they leave a gap
anywhere in their phone number, but they are not advised to join up the
number. “A lot of users are lost at that point,” Moss says.
He suggests that sites should use panels of potential users to spot any
potential pitfalls. “You recruit ten people who are typical of the target
audience and set them tasks on the site. You soon uncover anything that
makes it difficult to complete those tasks and then you can make the
improvements,” he explains. But he says this research needs to be carried
out by a usability expert, rather than by an in-house web designer,
or potential problems may be missed.
Another method that can help in building usable websites is card
sorting. Research respondents are given cards bearing the titles of all
the various pages on the website and are asked to sort them into logical
groups. This can form the basis of the site map and is indicative of how
users naturally structure information.
As the web gets even more complex, brands will need to ensure that
they keep the needs of users at the forefront of their site designs.
Marketing Week Interactive 41